Explore Evaluation Guide
External Entities
What Are External Entities?
How Do External Entities Work at Design Time?
At design time, external entities provide an interactive visual representation of the underlying data that you can search from the Data Hub pane, drag and drop, and model with in Mendix Studio Pro, just like the rest of the core Mendix Platform.
How Do External Entities Work at Runtime?
At runtime, external entities use their built-in connection and security information to directly query the underlying OData resources. When the data is received back, it is turned into Mendix objects in memory and cached just like every other Mendix object, keeping traffic from the data source to only what is needed.
How Can I Use External Entities with Other Technologies?
As of today, there are two ways to attach external entities to data sources that are not OData–compatible. The first way is wrapping the underlying data with an OData wrapper using either Mendix or custom code. The second way is using a pre-built connector for the Data Hub connector framework.